HMRC’s ‘hiring and firing’ is left to the wiring?

Introduction

 

Over the last few decades, technology has transformed so many different aspects of our lives.

 

So marked have the improvements been, in fact, that even those people who struggle to master the television remote control will concede that things are generally easier, more convenient and more efficient than they used to be back in the…err… good old days.

 

I count myself as an automation advocate but, in spite of all the progress in recent years, I would like to believe that there will always be a need for the human touch.

 

Some things are so complex, so immediate and so perplexing that, at least for the moment, they cannot be easily dealt with by the ‘bots. 

“These are not the tax advisers you are looking for”

 

Things like tax, for instance.

 

Indeed, last year, we saw the dangers of handing over your tax litigation research to AI counsel. 

 

But what about tax recruitment?

 

By none other than our friends at HMRC?

Robotic hiring decisions

 

Well, over the weekend I was puzzled to read a Sunday Times’ report about HMRC being so keen to use AI for the recruitment of some staff that many individuals applying for jobs did not speak to a human until their first day in post.

 

To me, this is not only unbelievable… It is absolutely preposterous. So much so that I have doubts believing it can be true.

 

But, if it’s in the papers, it must be true, right?

 

Even recruiters who recognised the merits of AI for some parts of the hiring process described the scale of the Revenue’s digital dependence as “unusual”.

 

I actually think that it’s simply another illustration of HMRC’s almost giddy determination to press ahead with technological novelty before the likely consequences of its practical application are definitively ascertained.

 

Let us not forget, of course, its rapid climbdown in March over plans to shut its telephone helpline for half of the year and divert customers in need of help to its online facilities ().

 

Last summer’s publication of its most recent annual report also made clear that the Revenue was en route to becoming an “increasingly digital organisation” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmrc-annual-report-and-accounts-2022-to-2023/hmrcs-annual-report-and-accounts-2022-to-2023-performance-overview).

 

“Demand for our digital services”, it continued, “is growing”, even as it acknowledged that it was being confronted with “more customers having increasingly complex needs”.

Run time error

 

It is that very conundrum – hoping to solve tricky issues which require more specialist guidance while using digital templates – that has been singled out by the National Audit Office in the last week or so.

 

Despite HMRC spending £881 million on ‘customer’ support in the last financial year, the NAO noted that such “services have been falling below the expected service levels for too long”.

 

Although the NAO concluded that the plan to replace old world correspondence methods of post and ‘phone with new-fangled digital systems made some sense, the Revenue’s new platforms “have not made enough of a difference to customer contact levels”.

 

The key point in all of the NAO’s stinging criticism was, I reckon, the observation that “HMRC and customers have been caught in a declining spiral of service pressures and cuts”.

 

That begs the question whether the primary motivation for all Revenue’s digital fervour really is having exemplary customer service or simply saving cash.

The penny pinchers?

 

The idea of HMRC penny pinching was given extra credence by an illuminating exchange between its Chief Executive Jim Harra and members of the House of Common’s Treasury Select Committee in April.

 

Mr Harra conceded that he had to award “nearly a third of my staff, including all the helpline advisers and the staff who work on the post teams, a rise so that they can stay with the national living wage”.

 

Committee member Dr Thérèse Coffey was perhaps being diplomatic when she said that the admission was “slightly disappointing”, especially given that a salary uplift had been made seven years ago for the same reason.

 

When one considers that HMRC has almost 64,000 staff, Mr Harra’s remark lays bare the fact that tens of thousands of his colleagues are not well remunerated at all. 

 

That indicates why potential able candidates look elsewhere for their careers, why taxpayer issues take so long to resolve and why the adjudicator overseeing complaints made about HMRC’s investigations upheld 15 per cent more grievances in the last financial year than during the previous 12 months. 

 

I believe the emphasis on cutting costs rather than the nature of customer service may be a central factor in the Revenue’s robot recruitment reliance.

 

Perhaps the most damning element in all this is, as the NAO has identified, that the mix-up over priorities means that “HMRC cannot be certain that tax revenue is not suffering as a result”.

 

Faced with such a situation, I think that even unskilled individuals genuinely desperate for a job could be forgiven if they looked at other vacancies instead.

 

Further, if HMRC is letting AI do the hiring, then what about the firing?

 

It would certainly be interesting to see robotic HR make of Mr Harra’s performance…